


be someone else

by tnevmucric



Category: Persona 5, Persona Series
Genre: 80s, Alternate Universe - No Metaverse (Persona 5), Death, Drug Abuse, Edo Period, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Murder-Suicide, POV First Person, POV Third Person, Past Lives, Recreational Drug Use, Reincarnation, Sexual Content, Slurs, Some references to non-con, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 05:00:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26730082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tnevmucric/pseuds/tnevmucric
Summary: a short exploration of reincarnation.
Relationships: Akechi Goro & Amamiya Ren, Akechi Goro & Persona 5 Protagonist, Akechi Goro/Amamiya Ren, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	1. past

“I reached a half-mile before you caught up to me.” He keeled over himself, hands on his knees and shaking from adrenaline. Sweat plastered his hair to his scalp and in the moonlight, as he looked up, Ren thought he looked fiercely sick. “That must be a new record.”

Ren slid from his horses back and easily lifted the prince up by his armpits. It was a short movement they were both accustomed to, and the prince had long since stopped complaining. Ren placed his hands on the reigns.

“I’m beginning to think you’re dawdling on purpose”, he commented. The prince smiled privately.

“Maybe I’d just like a better look at the stars—one less congested."

They began the walk back; Ren keeping the leash of the horse wrapped around one fist and watching from his periphery as the prince, in nothing but his thin bedclothes, slowly slumped forward. With each step the horse took his body jostled limply but his hands seemed to grip tighter. Ren focused ahead. Neighbouring villages were a defined glow in the distance.

“When you kill, do you wonder what your victim is thinking in the moments it takes for them to die?”

“Implying those I kill are of my own volition”, Ren glances over at him. The prince turned his face him, back and neck bent awkwardly. “I don’t kill enough to wonder. There hasn’t been a war in many years nor has there been any issues at the palace resulting in such violence.”

“Then think before. You were a recognised samurai in my father’s army—you still are.” His eyes closed, his lips parting for breath. Ren noticed that in this light, his hair appeared the same colour as the horse’s mane. “It is another human life.”

“I suppose they pray to their gods, then."

His eyes opened.

“Is that what you would do?”

“I would think of my family”, Ren replied. “I would pray for their health. In any sense, death is often far too quick for something as slow as contemplation to arrive. The way I kill is merciful, and I take comfort in the fact.”

“Not many respect the work like you do. They hone blood-lust.”

“Then it is a disrespect to both them and their weapon. The katana is only used to kill and kill immediately; a fight should take seconds. It has been fashioned in such a way that its optimal target is major blood vessels and arteries—those who choose to ignore this fact are only cruel.”

“Patriotism can be confused with greater justice.”

“Meaning?”

The prince didn’t reply, humming and swinging his feet.

“You are in the best position to kill anyone you wish”, he said instead. “You’re the head of security. We trust you to keep us safe, to keep everything in line. My father trusts you to bring me back every time I run. You could break that trust.”

“I would then be hunted by those who I have taught and commanded. I would be dead as soon as I killed.”

“Would the kill be worth it?”

Ren’s steps faltered, the horse stopping with him. “There is no one I would ever like to kill. I kill because it’s my duty to protect and defend. It is not patriotism—it is an oath. You seem to be under the impression I like to kill. I’d thought you might know me well enough by now that I am not a brainless foot solider.”

The prince stared at Ren for a long moment; deep maroon eyes the same colour as his robe. It could have been a lavish blood, dripping right from him. Ren did not expect him to apologise.

“Were I you”, the prince said, “I would kill my victim and then kill myself. Is there honour in that? If the man I want to kill is a very bad man? I don’t care what he would think about in the moments after, and I disagree with you in the terms of mercy: a quick death is suffering.”

His words carved a silence into the empty hillside. The wind gently tousled the trees leaves and for the first time since meeting him, Ren did not know how to answer.

“It is your duty to keep me within my walls”, the prince said with finality, apropos of nothing. “Just as it is my duty to find a way out.”

Duty and want were different things, Ren thought. Fenced day in and day out, prowling like a tiger in a cage, he wondered how no one else could see what was brewing in the prince—what kind of weapon he was.

“We’re in the same situation”, Ren told him, tugging the horse back onto track. “You could kill anyone you wanted. Not because you are trusted, but because you are the prince. You are privileged, and you may even get away with it.”

“Yes."

Ren looked back at him, sideways.

“Am I the man you wish to kill, Masayoshi-san?”

The prince laughed loudly, finally sitting up to settle on the horse.

“No, Ren. And I thought I told you to stop calling me that.”

 _Right_ , Ren thought.  
  


* * *

  
His cheek was deeply bruised, his lip split. His hair was matted with sweat and Ren attributed the fierce look in his eye as a warning. His kimono seemed to be a woman’s; made of a stark red material, it had an intricate set of pearls and hand-stitched flowers curling towards the hem. What should have been a modern, feminine look was ruined by the fact that the kimono was hanging halfway from his body, revealing blood on his bare chest.

“It is your duty to guard these walls”, the prince said lowly, “Not inquire as to what goes on inside. You are dismissed for the night."  
  


* * *

  
A weeks worth of nights had passed and Ren still struggled with the assumption that he had perhaps been dreaming. A strange dream, if it was one… maybe born of his conversation with the prince the last time he left the complex. The prince had been dodging him however, which was uncommon to say the least. Ren trailed through the connecting hall to the prince’s private floors, his regular rounds, and today the sun cast dark orange tones against every wall. Skin was transformed into trickery bronze and the empty birdcages shone a particular farce—blinding to all those who dared look. Ren paused to stare out at the garden, the trailing stone path and large pond. The floral scent was almost overwhelming during this season and the colours alone were not at all the style of the palace that favoured a gaudier palette. A tall tree of wisteria dipped into the water and crowded the lilies; Ren found it claustrophobic. A throat cleared behind him and he turned quickly, standing to attention. Bowing at his waist felt like an afterthought.

“Masayoshi-san.” The prince’s face scrunched up, the sleeves of his dark kimono fluttering as he held his arms against himself. Ren, to some alarm and relief, noticed a faint, healing split in his lip.

“I told you not to call me that.” Ren smiled apologetically, bowing his head.

“Goro”, he corrected. “Is there something I can help you with?” Goro’s head jerked once, over his shoulder, his feet already turning with the movement.

“Join me for a walk?”

Goro stepped down from the hall into the garden, reaching down to tug up the length of his kimono and bunching it in his hand. Ren noticed with some amusement that he was barefoot, and imagined the stones were sun-warmed from the weather of the day. He trailed Goro from a distance, the only sounds being the occasional breeze disturbing the trees and the pond with the fish darting through it.

“Have you been out today?” Goro asked.

“Yes, for a short while. Former soldiers were having issue with their living arrangements.”

“And what was the solution?”

“Confirmation of their contract. Rearrangement.”

“Not execution?” he commented wryly.

“Misunderstandings are not a qualification for execution.”

“I’m surprised my father let that slide by.”

His feet thudded over the bridge and he stopped at the middle, letting go of his kimono to peer over the edge.

“And what was it like out there? Tell me of the day.”

“The day is above you.”

“A percent of it. Humour me, please.”

Ren watched him lean further and dangle his hand toward the water as the koi popped their heads up in inspection. They seemed to like him.

“The city was very busy today in preparation for the festival. Everyone is in good spirits, and much is to be celebrated. Children in the street were dancing, dressed in very beautiful colours. The farmers stalls are overflowing with product.” Ren looked up at the sky. “The sun is misbehaving, however.”

“Misbehaving?” Goro repeated.

“Yes”, Ren said. “I’m not a fan of the colour.”

Goro laughed at this, leaning upright and favouring Ren a squinted smile. It is in moments like these Ren did believe what the devout said about the Emperor’s relation to the sun goddess—a smile like Goro’s couldn’t relate to anything but the sun.

“What of the harbouring villages?” Goro then asked, bundling his kimono again and leaving the bridge.

“Business is well and the mountains are quiet. Tide was low today.”

“I would like to see the ocean someday.” He ran his free hand over a bed of irises and plucked out a dry petal. “Shido had this iris garden planted for my mother when she was ill. Irises purify evil energy and promote wisdom. The blue blossoms speak of hope and faith.” He let go, and the petal fell limply to his feet.

“Emperor Masayoshi must have loved your mother very much.”

“In his own way”, Goro replied distantly, and continued further into the garden.

The kimono he wore was a stark contrast to the shogunate colours and the sunset of the day. Draped in dark teals, he looked like a shadow of a leaf or a dark apostle. He sat at a short bench overlooking the flow of the pond and Ren stood beside him. Plantation appeared warped and strange beneath the water. Goro rubbed his feet against each other, brushing dirt off.

“He would have much preferred a daughter”, he began quietly, eyes darting to the garden entrance. “My existence is a threat to him. I suppose it doesn’t stop him from utilising the way I look.”

“How do you look?”

Goro bristled, his hair shifting over his shoulder. He must have had it tied all day judging by the kink halfway through the length of it. “I look very much like my mother, meaning in the correct circumstance I pass as a woman.” He narrowed his eyes at Ren. “Do you understand? When necessary, my father spreads rumour of his secret daughter—well placed rumours to the treasonous. They flock, empowered enough to believe they could buy or influence the weak, pretty daughter of the Emperor. Sometimes he even invites them to my room.” He rubs his forehead, sighing. “This is what you witnessed the other night. This is my… usefulness, to my father.”

The sky settled into a melodramatic, early night. Stars were visible through the orange and the warmth gave way to a cooler air, lily pads bobbing into the shade.

“I was not aware of that.”

“You may be head of security but there is little my father lets anyone know. He values my use and loathes my existence. Loves me and hates me. This is no way to live.” He reached out and touched Ren’s sleeve, smudging pollen away. “I apologise for how I acted towards you. It was cold. What I said to you the other night, about contemplating a victims last thoughts—Ren, I do not like to kill.”

“No one should”, Ren replied. He thought Goro’s hand was very warm and his long fingers delicate. “I take no offence, but may I ask something?”

“I won’t stop you.”

“Why are there empty bird cages around the complex?”

Goro laughed, pulling his hand away to run it through his hair. “You’ve been here all of six months, witnessed me murder a man, and that is the question which holds you captive?” He laughed again. “Shido has them shipped here for me, but I just set them free. It’s our own version of a conversation, I suppose. He can’t prove it’s me either so he just continues to be mad about it until he decides to refill the cages. My small rebellion.”

“I don’t know if I’d call it small. You must have freed dozens of birds.”

“I like to think I can hear them all in the morning as the sun rises.” His eyes slipped shut, a wry smile curling on his face. “Foolishly, I hope they might take me away.”

Overhead, a bird darted into the wisteria with a chirpy, sweet song. Goro sent a belated wave to it.

“It must sicken you to hear me complain about your general”, he commented with some humour. “Will you tell him? I’ll surely be struck down in the streets.”

“If you don’t mind my saying, were I ever planning to tell him the things you’ve told me, you would be been struck down long ago.” They shared a smile, and Goro looked down at his feet.

“I’m not sure whether to be thankful or not. A good friend might let me die.”

“A friend lends his ear and nothing more. I can’t offer solutions you yourself can find.”

“I suppose you’re right.” He took a final, deep breath and stood, but this time did not lift his kimono away from the ground. “I would like to kill my father.”

Around the garden, the surrounding wall was horrific and looming. Moss grew between the bricks and scuffle marks could be spotted along every part of it—some scarves were abandoned around the decorative top, snagged to remain until they deteriorated.

“Will you walk me back to my room, Ren? I’m feeling very tired.”  
  


* * *

  
“You’re distracted lately.”

Beneath them, the sand gave way to their weight and dampened their clothes. The horizon was a plain grey, and the edge of the tide nudged their feet. Futaba wriggled her bare toes against it.

“Am I?” Ren asked.

“Am I?” she mimicked, rolling her eyes. She pulled herself up from her hunch to lean against his side. “Sojiro was upset you didn’t visit last week. He won’t tell you that, though.”

Ren shifted his arm to pull it around her. “I’ll walk you back and talk with him then.” He took a moment to think. “Maybe I am distracted.”

“What”, she said, “you meet a girl?”

Futaba was short, no more than 5’5”. This didn’t stop her from being a formidable force against anyone who stood in her way. Ren kissed her head.

“No”, he replied, and ruffled her hair. “Come on, help me find a stone.”

* * *

The salt still clung to Ren’s shoes when he knocked on the door to the sun-room (a gifted installment many years ago from a Parisian visitor who never visited again). The stone felt heavy in his hand and still cool from the sea. He wavered before entering, even when Goro announced that he could.

“Ren”, he greeted with some apprehension. He sat up from his lounged position, robe shifting into place as he stood. “What was it you needed?”

The silk he wore was the colour of limestone, and yet the completely open room, decorated only with sparse furniture and a light olive tile, complimented him entirely. Ren thought that the floor would feel warm and that Goro’s hair would feel warmer and that the flush on his cheeks might taste like the sweat under his lips.

Ren held out his hand and opened it. The stone was the colour of a duck egg.

“For you. My sister and I visited the ocean yesterday.”

Goro’s eyes glittered. He took the stone eagerly and sat back down on the lounge seat, holding it to his nose and giving a soft laugh.

“It smells like salt.”

“She pulled it from a shallow rock pool”, Ren explained. “It lived among many small creatures… the beach was one of almost black sand. I think you would have enjoyed its sight the most.”

Goro held the stone to his chest.

“Thank you, Ren."

* * *

“The kaikin is a pretty picture but in reality, my father has kept up trades with China and Korea—even the Dutch republic.” Goro lifted his hand from the water and watched as droplets slid down his arm. “No country can ever be completely severed; it’s against humanity’s will. This is why our guests are never disclosed.” He leaned his chin on his hand to look at Ren. “The steam is making your hair curl. Is that how it looks most naturally?”

“Yes.”

He looked away again, sliding further into the water and tilting his head against the rock wall of the bath. “I wonder what kind of Japan we will be when this all collapses.”

“You think that will be in our time?”

“Anything’s possible, Ren. Very nearly. Samurai are now civil servants or office workers. Do you miss being a solider? Does it bore you to be here?”

“The company is more than satisfactory.”

He snorted. “Very funny.”

The glow of candlelight reflected a gold ripple over the water and the line of Goro’s back felt like a defined beacon Ren’s eyes kept dragging to. He focused on a plant in the corner as he spoke.

“In my travels, I once met a soothsayer. She spoke like you do about the inevitability of Japan’s fate—how the peace now really was no peace at all. She gave me her deck of cards and told me if I was ever in any turmoil, to pull one and follow what I felt as I looked at its image.”

“And what card did you last pull?”

“The sun”, Ren replied quietly. “And so I am here, protecting a prince who could very well protect himself.”

“You are my jailer”, Goro agreed. “How does it feel?”

“Very upsetting.” Ren swallowed thickly. He wondered how Goro was always so capable in conversation, always beginning sentences like they were loose threads to be tied up. It was a skill he himself did not possess. “I would like to show you the ocean.”

Goro turned to stare in some kind of shock. Half of his hair had been soaked dark from the bath and his skin was a pretty, blistered pink. He had the lean of muscle a soldier might and not for the first time, Ren thought about their unconventionality, and the fact that he could never say no to him.

“You’re very kind”, Goro told him, but he appeared affected in some way. “Show me these cards the next time we have a moment alone. I should like to read my own future.” He paused. “Perhaps we should have tea together tomorrow.” At this, Ren actually laughed.

“I do have other duties, you know. And besides, and the Emperor would not let you leave the complex.”

“In the garden”, Goro suggested, a twinkle in his eye. “Your duty is to me, foremost. What if I scale the wall again? Surely you will have to catch me.”

When he phrased it like that, Ren supposed he had a point.

* * *

  
“How am I to lay them out?”

Tea steamed from a short placemat beside them and Goro’s reddened teeth told the tale of overripe berries. Ren sat without slouch.

“There are particular ways, but I find it better to just trust your intuition. Pick as many or as little cards as you like, and read what your heart tells you.”

Goro shuffled the deck slowly, watching Ren with a tilted head.

“And this works for you?”

“It’s not led me astray.”

“A funny way of answering.” He drew a single card and placed the rest of the deck flat in his lap.

“What did you get?” Ren asked, but Goro held the card to his chest, hiding the face of it.

“My future is my own secret, is it not?”

“If you say so. What is your heart telling you, then?”

“It asks me to ask you if you are afraid.”

“Does it?”

“Yes.”

Ren shifted in place.

“Then yes. Frequently.”

“Why?” Goro asked.

“I couldn’t say.”

Goro leaned close, hidden by the shade of the tree. As he spoke, Ren could imagine the cool press of his lips against his burning cheek. How he’d like to taste those lips, the bitterness of strawberries and melon hiding there.

“You are very beautiful”, he said. The gold he wore was as luxe as his skin, as sunken as the bone of his brow. “You are extraordinary to me.”

Ren was at a loss for words.

 _“Goro!”_ the Emperor’s voice boomed. From where they were sat, they could spot him staring at another empty birdcage. Goro stood quickly, the cards sliding into a pile at his feet. Ren only had a few seconds to gather himself before he followed Goro back to the garden entry. The Emperor looked disdainfully over his son.

“The guests will be here by sundown; go get ready.” Goro moved quickly past him without a word and his eyes then darted to Ren. “Amamiya, back to your rounds.”

“Yes, sir.”

The next time Ren saw Goro, his kimono was dangerously long. Powder blue with white pearl flowers and stretches of khaki ivy, it reminded him of a pond laid vertical. Goro grabbed his arm as he rounded a corner and very quickly they were face-to-face, Ren’s arms instinctively shoving out under Goro’s throat. He dropped it immediately.

“What are you doing?” Ren demanded. “You should be out in the foyer.”

“I had to speak to you about this afternoon.” Goro was frowning, painted red lips turned down. The waist of his kimono has been tapered in, alluding to a more feminine form, and his hair was intricately styled. Ren couldn’t fathom how they’d not run into each other like this before—but he supposed when Goro didn’t want to be seen, he wasn’t seen… in most cases, at least. Ren shook his head.

“There’s nothing to talk about. You have to—”

“You didn’t like what I said?”

“I don’t… you shouldn’t have said it. I don’t know.” Goro stepped forward, hand still gripping Ren’s arm.

“You do know. Let me come to you tonight.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“If it is a matter of _should_ and _shouldn’t_ then I should like to know what you want.” Goro let go of Ren’s arm to touch his cheek. “If it is me, then don’t decline me now. Otherwise I will return to my room as normal at the end of the night. This is about what you want, not what you believe you should follow.”

Ren wanted to ask how he could speak this way. He wanted to ask if his thoughts were a red-hot fire the same way Ren’s were when he even delved into daydream. And Ren thought—Ren thought his hand was so soft, just sitting on his cheek.

“I do”, Ren found himself saying. “I do want you.” Instead of the massing guilt and burn of pain he expected at voicing this thought aloud, he found coolness. A relief. Goro breathed shakily and pressed their foreheads together. Ren was afraid to touch him, to break the mirage.

Goro darted away down the hall towards the foyer.

* * *

  
Ren counted minutes from the end of his shift to retiring to his bed that night. The complex was silent, its doors sealed tight. Someone else was doing nightly rounds tonight, but it was around this time that Ren would usually check the outer walls for signs of anyone breaking in or out. Instead, Ren laid flat on his futon, staring up at the ceiling. A bare breeze could be felt and he could hear the sound of trickling water, of snoring rooms away. When his door slid open, anticipation swam in his head, and Goro was quick to slide the door shut behind him. He looked apprehensive, his makeup gone and now dressed down to a simple yukata.

“I did not enjoy that”, he said first. Ren sat up, his fingers worrying against his extra blanket.

“I understand that.”

“But there are necessities. Obligations.”

“I understand that, too.”

Suddenly, Goro seemed very young. Vulnerable. His hair, tousled and long, and skin so flushed, reminded Ren of the late nights he’d spend taking care of his sister when she was sick and while Sojiro slept a well-earned rest. Goro made to take a step, but stopped himself, fists clenching at his sides.

“You are the easiest person to fall in love with”, he said, a low hum that tingled in Ren’s ears, “but I’ve had so long to wonder if it’s just you or the fact that nobody has ever cared for me as you do. Ren…”

Ren felt unnaturally still as Goro stood in front of him, resting a hand firm on Ren’s shoulder and splaying his fingers beneath the cloth of his bedclothes, on the exposed skin of his collar.

“I have imagined what you looked like under that armour many times”, he murmured. “Just as I have imagined what it would be like to have your hands on me.”

“Goro.”

Goro leaned in bodily, dropping to Ren’s level as Ren’s hands rose to catch his thighs. Goro’s arms folded around Ren’s neck and he rubbed their faces together with the laxness of a confident lover.

“Touch me now”, Goro whispered.

* * *

“I don’t think my parents were in love when they had me.” Goro spoke against Ren’s thumb as he traced the corners of Goro’s lips. The sheets, drenched with their sweat, alluded to their bodies in a way that could not be mistaken. “Any time I saw my mother, it was as if she would be holding back from screaming at me. My father would separate us at either ends of the complex. Neither of them wanted me, not even when I was born. Not even when I was an idea.”

“I love you”, Ren whispered, and Goro smiled, running his fingers through Ren’s curls.

“You love me”, he repeated. “How I wish that love could go as far back as my first splinter.” Ren pulled his hand down and kissed his palm.

“I think it can.”

Goro huddled closer, similar to a child about to share a secret. They couldn’t look fully at each other without going cross-eyed, so Ren stared at the peak of his cupids bow, focusing on the way Goro’s heart felt against his, and the way he kept sliding curls behind his ear.

“The last time I saw my mother, she tried to drown me in the river by one of our old homes. I swallowed so much water—it had felt like she conjured an ocean in my lungs somehow. Wave after wave, I kept swallowing it all. I was under watch by our physicians for over a month after.”

“How did you get her to let go?” Ren asked. Goro’s eyes closed briefly.

“I didn’t. My father severed her head. He pulled me up into his arms and saved me. I told you I would commit suicide were I to kill my father, Ren, but that is not because I am at all suicidal. It is because I believe I will never be finished repaying the debt my father created that day when he drew me from the river and forced the water out of me. Not even when he is dead. It is a hard burden to live with. And there might be no logic to what I am saying but it is what I feel.”

Ren couldn’t find the words to tell Goro that true family did not make you feel like you needed to repay them, and even if he did, he thinks Goro might have already known.

* * *

How unorthodox we are, running from sun and hiding in shadows. His tongue lapping sweat from my body and the firm press of his hips—I feel like his victim. I imagine the sharp press of his blade against me and I come with his image in my eyes. We keep going and going—it is as if our time will never run out.

* * *

Women danced with decorative fans and bells hanging from their sleeves, chiming a beautiful song. The ballroom, decorated with threads of gold ribbon, held frame: a perfect bubble surface ever shifting, ever swirling and never popping. And from the largest seat, at the highest table, Emperor Shido Masayoshi watched. His expression could be mistaken as a mask.

“No more war”, Shido announced. He towered the crowd in robes of bright red and orange, his headpiece resembling a fantastic sun. His smile was a lengthy divot in his face, the crease of someone natured towards distrust, and he pronounced each word with finality: _No. More. War._ The guests cheered, and his outspread arms returned to his front, his billowing sleeves glittering like pure gold. Across the party, hidden by a pillar towards the exit, Goro smiled teasingly.

“It’s midnight.”

“You’re insatiable”, Ren said.

“Don’t sound so surprised.”

They both looked back as the crowd roared. The Emperor could be seen grinning. A look came upon Ren’s face and Goro noticed, knocking their fingers together.

“What is it?”

Ren squeezed his hand once and let go, avoiding his eyes.

“I suppose I’m looking for a sign.”

“A sign you say? Well, there aren’t many of those going around.” Goro said it with the same tone you’d take to a child: both a confidant’s smile and a reprimanding message. “I saw you reading your cards the other night when you thought I was asleep. What did they tell you, Ren?”

Ren will later regret not telling Goro what he saw in his cards that night. An attendant rushed over: unaware of the proximity between them.

“Masayoshi-san, the Emperor requests your presence in his meeting room at once.”

* * *

  
Emperor Masayoshi. Unity of the people. Symbol of the state. Our heavenly sovereign. Emperor of God.

“You must think me a fool.”

* * *

“Tarot is a belief system”, Chihaya told the young solider. “The cards are a physical guide only to aid you in honing your intuition.”

“It’s not magic?” His smile was teasing, his voice low, but Chihaya could sense he was troubled. She pressed the deck into his gloved hands.

“Your belief creates your reality. Remember that.”

* * *

For the rest of that night, Ren did not see Goro. It didn’t worry him, except it did. The image of his cards lay still in his mind and his stomach toiled against itself, his head on a constant swivel throughout the party and his fingers wrapped loose around the hilt of the sword at his waist. The night was moving too quickly, and soon enough Ren was retiring for the night, sliding his door shut behind him with a deep sigh.

“Ren.”

Ren spun. There Goro was, lying on his futon as if it were any other night, with hands covered in blood and a dagger loose in his grip. The words were on Ren’s lips before he could even think them.

“What have you done?” Goro blinked slowly, pallid in the moonlight.

“Here I lie between good and evil and it is quiet”, he said. “Water doesn’t run. Hearts beat in the backs of heads instead of in the chest and prayers remain unanswered as prayers always have. It is coincidence that cares about our troubles and nothing more.” He licked his lips. “Shido is dead, Ren. Do you know what he said to me as he bled out? He told me my mother had unexplainable bouts of mania”, Goro’s voice became choked. “He encouraged her to kill me so they could be together.”

“Goro—”

“But he just wanted to get rid of her. He needed an easy out. She _loved_ me…”

“Give me the dagger, Goro. Now.”

“I’m so tired living with this weight”, Goro whispered. “How do you live with it? I see their faces every night I sleep, every morning as I wake, and now I have to see my father among them, with my mother again. Immortal in my mind. More real than before.”

“That may be what you believe but it is not the reality of the situation”, Ren tried. “He gave you no choice. You have a choice now.”

He slumped up, dragging the dagger with him. “A good friend would let me make my own decisions.”

“I am not your friend”, Ren said. “We can leave before dawn and finally leave here. There are places we can go where no one will know your face and you can have a new name.”

“It would be useless. I would know. You would know.” Goro’s eyes shut. “My mother’s sickness is in me, I think. I feel it sometimes—a feverish note. The only time it was away was when I was with you. When I held that cool stone in my hand.” He looked at Ren with a distant emotion. “Would you introduce me to your family?”

“Yes”, Ren promised. “They would love you. My sister would annoy you until you couldn’t breathe and my father could talk your ear off if you so much as mentioned the slightest interest in his craft.”

“That is a nice thing to imagine. You can have the comfort of knowing I will be thinking of us in my final moments. Of your family. What a beautiful image.” Ren’s resolve began to break.

“You’re being selfish.”

“I will see you in another life”, Goro replied with surety.

“You don’t know what lies beyond death.”

“I know what I want. That is enough for me.”

His kimono became very quickly spoiled red but his face became a sudden white. Ren would later think: this is what it is like to fall through the floor. The weight of him hit Ren’s arms as he crumpled.

_I hear the wind an hour away from here. It is touching stones on a beach, stones that once, a long time ago, pressed against my bare feet. I must have been a child. Everything scared me then._

_I see the stars. I feel his breathing grow slow, slower against me; those breaths of his so wet against my neck, his hand unfurling on my chest and his leg growing limp._

Ren pressed his face against Goro’s shoulder and held on.


	2. present

The highway in and out of Tokyo always feels longer than it is. Same asphalt, same strips of paint, same signs yellowed by the sun. The windows are cracked a quarter down, and he pulls his sunglasses away from his hair to perch them on his nose. The win rips at his shirt and ponytail—everything wants to come loose. This endless stretch of highway. A midday kind of summer where the lights are torn between fading and burning right out. I lean back in the passenger seat. His profile has always seemed too sharp to me. He doesn’t eat enough. A confined mountain in his Toyota Supra. His black silk shirt matching the cars exterior so well that we may as well have been going to a funeral. He wasn’t usually so dim. He was a pop star, and a pop-stars appearance demanded attention. I supposed this was his own way of showing his frustration to the world, walking around in heels an inch and a half high and decked in black from head to toe. Even with his windows tinted he wore those sunglasses. The only source of colour was the lit end of his cigarette, shifting ash onto his lap every time he turned to the steering wheel. Sometimes I miss his stage makeup; those extravagant colours to do everything but match his costumes, but I know here is where he trusts me most. Dressed for him, for me, not for a faceless crowd with one monotone voice, and us listening to Elvis sing _Heartbreak Hotel_ from one of his mom’s old tapes and that funny way he tries to croon along, exaggerating and mimicking the accent. Sunday has come and gone with a muted rainstorm and heady hotpot shared under his roof on the outskirts of the city where the two of us could pretend we were teenagers touching each other for the first time, left alone by parents on holiday. I get scared every time we come back to reality. Monday morning. I’m thinking: tell me something. Reassure me that no matter what happens in the time between now and Friday night, we’ll run. I always get clingy on a Monday. I want to keep his come inside of me and I want him to bruise me blue with his teeth—he never gives in. We’re going back to our separate worlds, back to my own apartment where the silence stays faint and tinny. I’ll toss and turn all night dreaming about things I won’t remember, and when I wake for my shift at Leblanc, it will feel like I’ve barely closed my eyes. For now, it’s just us. It’s our endless highway. Whoever’s funeral we’re going to, we don’t know their name. It’s 1985, and we can do anything.

His hand leaves the steering wheel to smooth over my thigh. We’re still a half hour out”, he says. “You should sleep a little more.”

I don’t want to sleep. I can’t miss a single second of us.

* * *

Ann files her nails 6 weeks before I ever beg Goro Akechi to put his cock in my mouth on a highway and 4 days after Goro Akechi king-hits me outside of a bar in Shinjuku.

We’re sitting in the furniture section of the department store on a cosy swing-loveseat. Cherry wood, a light blue canvas roof, orange suede upholstery. Ann files her nails and the filings start to dust over the magazine on my lap—her latest issue. Her unblemished face promises me the 11 secrets to keeping a man. Between ripping off her cuticles and blowing the dust from the magazine, she dips into the bag of honeyed cashews between us and crushes my toes with her sneakers, our heads leaning back instinctively as we swing.

“Let’s stay here forever.” She laughs at me.

“I think Ryuji’s running late again.”

“We should have just gone to meet him at the school.”

“I’m not breaking tradition just because he’s running late.”

As if summoned by the mention of his name, Ryuji careens down the outdoor lighting aisle and takes up the non-existent space between Ann and I, showing careful regard for the cashews only. I have to rip the crinkled magazine out from under his ass and Ann pinches his thigh.

“What’s the news?” he asks, muffled as he tips a handful of nuts into his mouth. His keys make the front pocket of his shirt a crinkled slouch and his reading glasses are shoved haphazardly into his hair along with his sunglasses. _What’s the news?_ He always asks, even when there’s really no news to tell.

“Shoots came out.” I pass Ann the magazine and she flips a few pages in. It’s my job today to kick the swing as we talk, and we filter through the _aws_ and _ahs_ of compliments, complaining about the blurbs and photo descriptions and interview questions that spun her life into a tall tale of debauchery and glam. Question: _What’s the craziest thing you’ve done in a relationship?_ Answer, after some very apparent editorial influence: Ann regrets ever accepting the interview. Ann always seemed untouchable to outside influence—she had advice and experience in anything you asked her. I remember once when I was younger and less frightened by things that Ann had told me to never date a writer. She told me a lot of things, like how coconut oil should be used everywhere but your face and the importance of having a clean private area, but it is this that stuck with me. She said she’d dated writers, said the break-ups were incurable and inevitable and she added they made you bitter, biased and broken (apparently more literate, too). A writer’s always going to immortalise you in their work somehow, she said, snapping her gum around her finger; a street name, some weird detail that only you’d recognise, a character who just so happens to have the same hair colour as you. Don’t date writers, they just blame you for everything and profit over their own stupid torment of something you did, blown out of proportion.

Ann was someone you met and wondered how she was even real. She didn’t like neon orange, only drank mochas and often forgot her middle name. If you’d never been kissed before she’d offer to kiss you—and she’d give you the best kiss of your life. Dangerously generous and burning with heart, she said things like _‘this is real music’_ while listening to an advertisement on the radio for health insurance. She’d make terrible apple turnovers with sultanas on the inside and leave them in a box on your doorstep to fog up and soggy the pastry. She never hung up her towel after a shower, never bothered with tying up her hair unless she had to, and loathed discussion of economics. Unflatterable and unflappably genuine, if you told her she looked beautiful, she’d smile and thank you but she’d smile like she already knew. Her wink was a camera shutter and you had to wonder what photos she was taking.

Ann shoved the magazines in her purse, stole Ryuji’s sunglasses and said: “Speaking of, my friend Akechi is coming to my party tomorrow night. He writes music. He came back a few nights ago from some time abroad. Futaba’s met him before, you’ll like him.”

How I would like him.

“What, Goro Akechi?” Ryuji frowns. “Ain’t he the one who wrote that song about syphilis?”

“He was going through a phase”, Ann insists. “I’m sure he had his reasons.”

“Could have been a metaphor”, I point out.

“A metaphor for what?” Ryuji threw up his hands and a few cashews toppled into his lap. “Your dick going green doesn’t suddenly get pretty when you wax poetry about it.”

“Big words”, Ann grins, nudging him. “College boy’s all grown up.”

“Keep wailin’ on me like that and I won’t save your life when you’re dying. _I_ have a certificate in _first-aid_.”

“So do I”, Ann retorts. “So does Ren. Futaba is literally training as a women’s physician so I’m pretty sure she’d be able to save my life too.”

“Yusuke. Yusuke doesn’t know first aid.”

“He doesn’t”, I agree. “Remember that time he got me to row him out into the middle of Inokashira?”

“Didn’t Makoto have to give him CPR?” Ryuji shakes his head.

“Dude, the story gets more wild the more it’s told. We have to maintain its integrity.”

Ann holds both of our hands as we walk to the diner to catch an early dinner. Her purse swings down to catch on her elbow and a regular amount of paparazzi yell towards her, questions, gossip, harassment. She smiles without a care in the world.

* * *

  
“You think there’ll be any babes here?”

I elbow Futaba as we trail up the stairs and she mimes a dramatic collapse against the railing. I shake my head.

“Stop it. Ann said a couple of people—twenty, tops.”

She pulls herself back up and joins me on the landing, folding her arms pointedly. “That’s twenty more than I’d prefer.”

“Just imagine it as grocery shopping.”

“The most I’ll be shopping for is spiked drinks and stale crackers.” Her gaze flicks back to the stairs where Ryuji has slowly followed behind us. “Aren’t you meant to be a gym teacher?” she snarks. He drags his arm around her shoulders and ruffles her hair, making her yelp.

“It’s called muscle exhaustion. You’d understand since it’s your constant state of being.”

“Hey, just because I’m not stacked with muscles doesn’t mean I’m not stacked anywhere else.” Ryuji recoils and she cackles, walking ahead. “G-man!” she calls out. “Stop smoking in the fucking hall.”

Ryuji and I both look to the end of the hallway where a man is propped by Ann’s door, huffing away on half a cigarette. He’s taller than Ryuji and I and has a shimmery, silver shirt tucked into his pants. He eyes us and vaguely taps his cigarette.

“Get tall”, he tells Futaba, accepting the fist-bump she sends darting towards his stomach. “Who’re your friends?”

“That’s Ryuji and my brother Ren. Don’t even pay attention to them, they have shirtless pong tournaments in the summer and then have the sheer gall to reject the homoerotic energy of said tournament.” Ryuji shifts uncomfortably.

“You really like to play up that socially awkward act, don’t you?” She shrugs.

“Keep the standards low so you can blow their minds later. Isn’t that what you’ve been doing with your past, like, four girlfriends? Minus blowing their minds?”

“I’m going to get Mona to piss on your pillow.”

“Bold of you to assume he doesn’t already piss on my pillow.” She inches up onto her toes to put her arm around the man’s shoulders and he leans to let her, as if he’s used to it. “Anyway, this is Goro. Total pop star hottie.”

“That’s an awful bruise you have there”, Goro interrupts, focused just below my eye. “Get into a fight?”

You think you’re funny? I want to ask him. I want to push him against Ann’s stupid yellow door and crush his cigarette beside his head and push him, push him harder. You think you’re so fucking funny, huh? I want to get on my knees for him.

“Some guy hit me from behind and it blew up.” He wears the split in his lip like an accessory.

“How awful”, he says again. Futaba rolls her eyes, letting go of Goro in favour of reaching for the door.

“Yeah, yeah, Ren’s poor million-dollar face. Let’s go inside.”

At that moment Ann’s door swings open, revealing Ann herself dressed head-to-toe in sequins. She goes to greet us but is caught on the smoke leaving Goro’s lips.

“You asshole”, she says, “you told me you were getting ice.”

* * *

Ann’s apartment is a collision of flea-market finds and high-class glassware. The walls have been the colour of dark honey ever since she moved in and a staircase in the corner, which has since been decorated with lights, leads to a separate loft for her bed. From the balcony you can assume the sky goes on forever.

“This is way more than twenty”, Futaba smothers in my ear, clammy hands pulling me down by the sleeve. “I’m going to take off my glasses and pretend I’m on a blind drug trip. Can I put them in your jacket?”

Roughly thirty people are scattered over the apartment floor, drifting in and out of each other’s space and filtering outside to smoke. I notice Goro on the outskirts of it all, leaning sideways while talking to small groups, never with a drink in hand. His smile is a quick, undamaged flash of white in the darkness and I almost feel embarrassed to seek him out. At the centre of it all, Yusuke is seemingly passed out on Ann’s huge plush single-seat with sunglasses and his shirt unbuttoned to his navel, a fruity drink between his knees. Makoto and Haru wave me down from the larger lounge behind him.

“What happened to your face?” is the first thing Makoto asks, still decked in her work suit and frowning at me from the settee. She sits with a firm strength in her shoulders, collar popped and one arm on the backing of the couch. I lean at the waist to accept the cheek-kisses from Haru.

“Just some guy at a bar. Make some room for me, I haven’t seen you two in ages.”

There’s a familial comfort in the way Makoto’s face feels against mine with our heads pressed close and the way Haru stretches her legs out on both of our laps. Ann sits on her own coffee table, regaling some story at us as we laugh and grow sick with the slickness of mood-lighting and a smoky ceiling. A drink is sweating in my hand a song is playing that I don’t recognise— _cold medicine calling me a fool, nine months out of date, two years out of school._ Ryuji jostles back into view with Yusuke under his arm, collapsing into the beanbag across from us.

“He drank the water from your fish tank”, he tells Ann. She pouts.

“Oh man, again?”

* * *

“Funny meeting you here.”

Goro rolls his shoulders with a sigh, white breath disappearing into the cool night air. His sleeves are rolled, leaning against the balcony railing and at some point he tied his hair back, revealing a single ring in his ear.

“I could have expected it”, he replies considering, and then offers me his cigarette. “Ann knows everybody.”

I take it and lean back against the railing, the metal edge cold where my shirt is thin, I can see the party continuing on inside, a blur of violet and yellow light. The cigarette just tastes like a cigarette. I don’t know what I was expecting. I suppose I’m used to some of Makoto’s lipstick or maybe the impression of Ryuji’s teeth where he always clamps down. I blow smoke away and pass it back to him, our fingers brushing. He continues to face the skyline. I’m caught staring as his lips wrap around it, cheeks hollowing as he inhales. He looks at me and I look away.

“So what was that song about?” I ask. He looks confused. “I heard it playing, sounded like you. Something to do with cold medicine.”

“Oh. That’s an old one.”

“Yeah?"

“Yeah.” He smoked a little more. “During the last few years of high school I kept a bunch of old medication that I’d regularly steal from my mother. I was convinced that once I graduated I’d use it all to kill myself—it was out of date by that time, though.”

I’d wager the song had some deeper metaphor on why he was too pussy to actually kill himself, the fact of the matter being that he never really wanted to die and was suffering the same teenage dysphoria all of us have.

“Still could have worked”, I point out, apropos. He smiles.

“You’re right. How’d you meet Ann?”

“She was a year ahead of me in school.”

“She’s mentioned you.”

“Only the best I imagine.”

“She said you have a lot of part-time jobs.”

“She’s never mentioned you to me.”

His mouth twitches.

“Funny.”

He passes me the cigarette again. I take a quick drag and pass it back.

“You know my sister, too. That’s weird by merit.”

“It is, isn’t it? Tokyo isn’t a small place.”

“Maybe the woes of fame have become so boring you’ve decided to stalk a lowly stranger.”

“Ha, ha.”

“Seriously, you’ve got to be the saddest pop star I’ve met.”

“You’ve met many.”

“3, exactly.” He laughs lightly.

“Writing music is a lot of the same thing done a lot of different ways. A lot of recycling, a lot of the same phrases used in different work.” He closes his eyes and I notice how long his lashes are, and the way he holds himself even as he’s standing still with something like a railing to take the brunt of him: he holds his own shaking wrist, expecting collapse. “And then I get home, and it just feels cold and empty and a place to put myself until I have to write again.” He brings his cigarette to his mouth but decides against it, pulling it down. “I don’t even like singing. Or maybe I did, but now I don’t. If that makes me a sad pop star, then sure.”

“What do you like? Starting fights with random guys?”

He prods at the damp mark his lips have left towards the end of the cigarette, a private smile to himself.

“I apologised for that.”

“No you didn’t.”

“I did. I said your bruise looked bad.”

“That’s more of an appraisal than it is an apology.”

He leans back to look at me, his smile having grown wider.

“I’m _sorry_ ”, he accentuates. “How was that, sweetheart?”

“Good enough. Can I get another drag?”

It’s my nerves that are apparent as he gives me the cigarette and it’s my nerves that I spot him picking at with his eyes. The next time he inhales, he takes his time.

“I like talking to you”, he tells me. “That’s something I like. You have a good right hook."

“Why did you even hit me?”

“Why’d you hit back?”

 _‘Cos you were a fag_ , I thought of saying. But everyone’s a fag in a gay bar and my mouth was feeling less than savoury to say something like that, then and now. Let me tell you how it happened.

Lala says to me _: if you’re gonna mope all night I may as well pay you to make the drinks._ I don’t wanna make the drinks tonight. I can’t even remember why I’m moping.

I’m thinking the problem is probably in my head; the inconsistency, the on-off narcissism, the erectile want to run but to also instill. I’m trying to pave a way for myself on a road that is beginning to collapse. I’m another adult who wants to e a child because being an adult sucks and none of my dreams at all have come true. A man brushes up behind me, leans to grab a napkin and whispers something filthy in my ear. I shrug him off. Coming here is as good as therapeutic shock. Crossroads: your personal brand therapy where a woman with a cock will tell you which road to take to the sweet, sweet bliss of beyond—electric shock. Everyone in here has something at least. A purpose, extra cash to burn, and a job they more than tolerate. I pull away from the bar and throw myself into the crowd; everyone here tonight has something to take a piece of or is ready to leave a piece behind. I think about men and I think about me and I hate it, hate myself. I’m one of those guys in the hush who is fine with is gay friends but isn’t fine with himself.

And I, I got jet-engine oil in my veins and I’m crunching on ice from an old drink. The club’s a haze: dark green detritus for me to swamp myself in. Some of the men are in skirts and fishnets while others wear their best fuck-me pumps and have shaven legs. Some tower, some cave. Some are in nothing but a jean jacket and shorts and somehow, beyond all odds, he is across the club staring at me. Me being jostled by the desperate, grinding bodies of other men like me who for one night a week lose it all so they might cope with never having it all. He’s dressed in a shirt I’ll later claim is my favourite and it’s buttoned halfway down to his chest. His head tilts like; I see you. His head tilts like; I wanted you to see me, too. His head tilts back, gesturing to the exit. Like these other men, I know that with a cock in my mouth it’s hard to not just let go and give in to that impossible ecstasy. There’s a silence when I blow him that lets me know he’s still watching. His silences are never truly silent. They’re ruined by the sound of his fingers brushing his own hair or the rattle of his cigarettes in his front pocket. How I’d like to be those fingers, those strands of hair, that waiting tobacco. This feeling is right. This makes more sense than any girl’s pouted lips. I want him hard. I want him rough. I want him to hold me against his chest so I can feel both of our hearts work in overtime because this is some kind of rapture.

There is no hesitation in the way he hits me. Before I even have the chance to take the full recoil in, I’m swinging back. He hits me and before my brain can rattle in its skull, I’m clipping him in the jaw, feeling his head snap sideways. His come is still in my mouth. The crowd is almost instantaneous, booing and jeering. They’ve heard the rattle of the bins like a dog whistle—some will get off on it, some will itch to join in. There’s blood painting his teeth pink and he laughs at me, doesn’t even seem to care if he gets recognised or that his belt buckle is still undone. Wherever we are, nobody really exists. We’re just the empty outlines of the bare minimum of what we want to be: so unfulfilled and without colouring. A man with a tube of lipstick is writing odds on the wall and someone is collecting cash. He spits on my shoe and I think of saying, of pointing at my mouth and saying: _you missed._

Lala breaks up the fight quick. It’s bad for business. While I’m dragged in by the scuff he’s darting away.

“Better use the communal downstairs”, I tell him. “Ann’s bathroom lock is busted.”

He crushes the last inch of his cigarette into the railing. “I might get lost on the way there. Would you mind showing me?”

* * *

Saturday. Sometime after the new after. The now in which is after our second meeting. The continuation of our new normal. He stands in the doorway of his mother’s bedroom, his smile so wide and pretty, robe open. The room smells like sex and smoke. When he looks at me like this, I could die. Wherever I am that look follows me. We’re weeks into enamour, inflicted with insatiability.

“You’re a genius”, he says.

I’m not a genius. Geniuses have arrivals and think of the world in armour and thirst for formulas that nourish our ideological itches—I’m no genius. And if we were to share every day in unwashed sheets and with cold feet and bland coffee I would recite to him those words, just those words: you’re a genius. Because he is. Because he has eyes that see so much more than mine and he has eyes that see the world through different colours than mine and I think it’s genius enough that he can write one twelve-syllable line and cause the word to stop rotating because it wants to listen, because there’s something he has to say that’s important to it and you.

He smiles like he knows something I don’t. His mother’s home is like him, tall and willowy and winding, all bright walls and strange exteriors. His cock is thick against his thigh, the morning sun crowding shadows under his brow. I pray for another day like this. Sometimes with him I feel like I’m walking blind, grappling onto whatever part of him I can find and hoping the right way is whichever way he leads me and knowing whichever way he leads me is where I’d go regardless.

“Coffee?” he offers. I nod. My favourite memory of us is the first time he asked me here. I’d spent nights, cramped hours sneaking to and from his city apartment but when he took me here, it was like he took me in. The bath water had been cooling and his lips were chapped. He’d just finished a private show in Ueno and I waited for him. I always did.

“I grew up just outside of Tokyo in this tall house towards the end of this really steep street. Well, it seemed steep when I was younger.” He walked his fingers down my arm. How I felt pressed against his chest was not capable of description. “My mother died when I was 17. All her assets, the house, they’re mine. I’ve been meaning to clean it out for years but there’s no real point. There’s probably just a lot of pain there and I’d rather not be reminded of it.”

“Why not hire someone then sell it?”

“It’s the only thing I have left of her”, he shrugs once, smiles a little shyly. “Even if she loathed me. Us humans.”

“So stupid.” He laughs.

“Yeah, yeah we’re fucking idiots.” He ran his hand over my face and pulled me in for a kiss, bunching my hair in his hand. He said: “I can feel it in the way they all look at me sometimes. Her look. No matter what I do they’ll speculate. No matter what clothes I wear or what I say, they’ll always see through me. I feel so doomed. There are parts of me I’m still finding scattered at my feet. There, for anyone to see. I’m something to be hated and pitied and people know everything about me. I wish I could just close the curtains. Turn off the lights. Nobody’s home. God, nobody’s home.”

I never know what to say when he drops things like that on me. It comes out of nowhere, all at once, and my perception of him shifts as he steps out of the outline he’s left cauterised on my eye. Shift, re-enter, re-cauterise. Like a changing channel.

“Ren”, he runs his lips over mine, his hand lavishing my neck, my collar. “I’d like to take you to my mothers house.”

For him to have me. To swallow. To have him cast light on me. He is holy and for once I am not irreligious. This is what it is like.

* * *

Before, when we were still trying to figure out what it was like to want and not want and still want. Or maybe that was just me. And he somehow kept finding me, now behind the steamed whistle of the coffee machine and the hidden gluttony of peeling posters at the nearby cinema.

Futaba waves her foam-covered spoon vaguely in my direction.

“I’ve got a cream for that schmuck if you want it. Guaranteed to make bruises fade in three days or less. Or more.” I scoff, finishing off her extra two takeaway cups.

“No thanks.”

“Your loss.” She then leans forward conspiratorially. “Hey, you know Tae thinks she’s cracked it.”

“Cracked what?”

Futaba’s glasses glare a sinister white as she tilts her head.

“The key to male enhancement of course. I can cut you a deal.”

“Get out of my café”, I complain, pushing her coffees at her. She pokes her tongue out and wraps them in her hands.

“I’m telling dad you called it your café—and I expect you crawling back to me when you come to your senses.” As she’s about to leave the door opens, the bell ringing loudly and Goro’s bemused face appearing, his arm rasing to hold the door open as Futaba ducked under it.

“You coming tonight?” he asked her. She shook her head, voice trailing as she walked backwards into the alley.

“Sorry, we’re solving world hunger and it’s very time-sensitive. I’ll see you next week!”

The door clatters shut and I raise an eyebrow at him, pulling a mug down for him.

“Coming where?”

“We have a fortnightly game group”, Goro explains. “Home blend is fine, thanks.”

I take the short jug of coffee and pour it into his cup. “How did you find this place?”

“Ann mentioned you worked here. Futaba’s talked about it, too.” He brings he steaming mug to his face, inhaling deeply. “Thanks. Smells great.”

Thanks, thanks, thanks. I’d thought then he seemed like the kind of guy who didn’t care what words came out of his mouth. He had clear gloss nails and the dark residue of some eyeliner around his eyes, sunglasses pushed into his hair. A ring on every finger, tapping against the ceramic of his cup and the wood of the counter.

“I know”, he says, reading my mind. “I don’t hide it very well, but men are fashionable these days. There’s a line you cross when they realise you’re gay, too. Our fatal red tape. I looked at a guys dick in the bathroom once, can you guess what happened?”

“He beat the shit out of you?”

“I sucked him off. Can I smoke in here?”

“Go for it.”

He sets his coffee down and shakes open his cigarette box, plucking one between his lips and flicking out a silver lighter. It’s a smooth movement, and he blows the smoke away from me, picking up his coffee again to take a sip.

“I like this song.” I’d forgotten the radio was even on. I tune in, and it sounds like some low jazz number.

“Doesn’t seem like your style”, I say.

“You’ve listened to my music?”

“Once or twice, and the other night at Ann’s. Not my taste.” What a lie. What a _lie_.

“What’s your taste?” he asks, grinning a little. It’s like he can see right through me.

“Other stuff.”

“Other stuff”, he repeats. “I’ll have to look into that. You’d think it’d be easy, writing your own music.”

“It’s not?”

He makes a so-so gesture. “It’s about constantly raising your own standards until all you have are words that don’t exist, lines that don’t make sense and a feeling that won’t quit: that’s how you write a song. That’s just how this shit works. Music, I mean.”

“Doesn’t seem healthy.”

“It’s not.” I realise as he reaches to tap his cigarette in the ashtray by my elbow that I’ve leant over the counter to listen to him talk. “Music used to mean something. Writing it. I could walk out onto stage with nothing but the lights and a microphone and I could sing—just sing these words that’d wake me up in the middle of the night and even if only one person in the audience knew what I was singing about, that mattered.” He spits a little, wiping ash from his lip. He talks a lot with his hands, regardless of what’s in them. He’s left a trail of ash and coffee drops on the counter. “Now it’s about the money. It’s about trying to _be_ somebody. Why can’t I be happy with the few people who have liked me since the beginning? Who’ve found something in what I’ve written, that’s touched them so deeply? When can I stop writing for someone else and start writing for _myself_ for a change? Maybe I’m not made for this, no matter how much I want it. No, I don’t think so.”

“You talk a lot.”

“I guess it’s easier to talk to strangers.” He takes another sip of coffee. “You don’t talk enough. We’re both hiding in our own ways.”

“And look how it’s working for us. We can’t even hide from each other. Refill? You went through that pretty quick.”

“Thanks.” He watches me refill his cup, one of his larger rings clinking against the ashtray. “How old are you?”

“25.”

“You look a lot older. Ren.”

“What?”

“No, nothing. I like your name.”

I stare at him, not understanding at all how he exists, not in the way I’m in awe of Ann but in the way we are in awe of simmering magma chambers beneath the Earth’s crust.

“Yours is fine too”, I say, but he shakes his head.

“Mine’s a pseudonym. Akechi is just a name in a book.”

“Then what’s your real name?”

“Does it matter?”

Leblanc is always quiet this time of day. The only busy hours are the late afternooners and the early risers. Figures he’d come hours after the rush.

“No”, I reply finally, picking up the cloth I’d left at the edge of the bench. “I guess not.”

“So, will you go somewhere with me?”

“What?”

“After work, don’t worry.”

“I—no. No.”

“Why not?”

I laugh, bewildered. “I don’t know you. You said it yourself, we’re practically strangers. Just because I blew you a couple of times doesn’t mean I want to hang out.”

“ _That’s_ what’s stopping you?”

I can’t tell you why I ended up saying yes. I just know that if I had said no a third time, I would have regretted it. Something about Goro made me want to take bizarre chances where my anxiety would have kept me inside. You meet Goro, and Goro changes your life. Goro is your dream boy, the one you don’t take home to meet your parents, the one that fucks your best friend and gets away with it. Goro makes every day of your life worth living because he makes you feel like you are the single most important person in the world. And maybe you are, to him, but he’d never tell you that and you’d never believe him if he did. Later, we’ll walk the empty Shibuyan streets and he’ll ask me which place is mine.

“That one”, I’ll say. It is then he will ask if I can make as good a coffee in there as I can at the café.

“Yes”, I’ll say.

* * *

Enough of the same benzodiazepines or opioid and you start to grow a tolerance; suddenly you don’t just have anxiety, you’re an addict’s with a shaky knee and a trigger finger. My life, I think: a cocktail of drugs and alcohol and caffeine. It’s no wonder I can never get the timeline straight. I lean against the wall by my phone, pressing it to my ear with my shoulder as I light my cigarette.

I don’t blame him for getting me into the drugs, but sometimes I think I should.

“Hey, sorry. What’s up?”

“Bad time?”

“No, just got out of the shower. I thought you had some performance tonight.”

“I finished a while ago, can I come over?” I glance at the time.

“If you’re quiet.”

“That’s your problem. See you soon.”

“Key’s above the doorframe.”

Out in the cold it’s easier to think. I can slump on the balcony and untangle the knots in my hair and chain-smoke until I can’t feel my toes. I can pretend I am like every other protagonist anticipating the climax ahead when really I am thinking about him, about the other day when he fucked me against the sliding door and I could see the dark sky ahead.

“You look stressed.”

I glance over my shoulder, nail of my thumb wedged between my teeth and cigarette burning dangerously close to my eyes. He looks nice, dressed in some pre-planned getup of green silk and flared pants—glitter on his skin, necklace on his chest.

“Long week.” I offer him the cigarette and he leans up behind me, one hand low on my back as he takes a drag. “How’d it go?”

“My manager is an asshole. And the studio didn’t even want me to sing, they expected me to fucking lip-sync.”

“Did you?”

“Had to, didn’t I? Someone half-blind could see how staged it all looked. It was a mess.” He sighs and passes the cigarette back, setting his free hand over mine on the railing and leaning his full weight against me, his face in the scoop of my shoulder. He smells sun-warmed from hours ago, tire in every breath. I think randomly of interlude—those short few minutes to catch your breath before an album picks up again. He looks up, coaxing me to look his way, and I have never seen him so vulnerable.

“We’re friends, aren’t we?” he asks.

I don’t know that Goro would be the greatest friend. He’s aggravating, presumptive. He weaves in and out of my life without care, like he’s always been there. He doesn’t care what I have to say some days but he never ignores me. There’s a file a mile wide and heavier than a tonne of bricks that weighs in my mind—subtitles, jokes Goro likes, food Goro hates, movies Goro talks about, metaphors Goro says but might not understand.

“We’re friends”, I reassure him, and he makes a soft noise, leaning his cheek back against my shoulder. I want to ask him what’s bothering him. I want to say the right things to make him keep talking, keep wanting to come to me. I want to know him so badly, even when I can’t bear to know myself.

I forget about all of this as he snorts cocaine off of my stomach. Or maybe it amplifies and I’m just too far-gone to realise it for what it is. Our veins are throbbing, thighs twitching with the aftershocks. His hand trembles, slips sweaty onto my knee, picking at a loose thread on my sweatpants.

“I get so anxious”, he confesses to me. “I wake up at night sometimes because my heart is beating so fast. And I feel like my capacity for living hasn’t been getting better with age at all, but worsening with every choice I make. All the choices I make are the wrong choices and all of the words I write just run circles around themselves. I can’t sleep sometimes; I get that worried. I do bad things to keep myself from spiraling but then I spiral anyway. I feel like sometimes whatever muscles and nerves control my fingers know more about me than I do, does that make sense? The words that spill out, collapse on each other and _wheeze_ —they aren’t words I could ever explain. Is it worth the creative gain if I’m not getting better, but my writing is? My words are likable and I am not. I want to pull out my teeth sometimes and give people something really ugly to look at. Sometimes it feels like all I’m good at is destroying myself and writing about it afterwards. I want to be a tree, and then I want to be chopped down into wood, and then I want to be burned.”

“You should see a doctor.”

His lips trace words onto my chest.

“So they can tell me what?” he whispers.

I don’t have an answer. I look up at the ceiling above us, at the sky through the window beside us. My hands feel so clammy, so uncomfortable. Sweat beads under me, soaking the mattress cover. I want to tell him that I can feel l his heart beating against mine, that sometimes I get so overwhelmed that I just overflow.

He fucks himself on me as the sun barely filters into the room. The evidence of last night fizzes in my mind and my fingers are twitching on his thighs, his skin under my slick palms. He leans forward, grinding himself down on me, his arm stretched as he clutches the pillow under my head, his face dripping sweat into my mouth. He’s speaking gibberish. Saying nonsense. _A king-hit for the crowd,_ he murmurs. _Won’t get bit, just a bit blue._ I gasp out air and he keens; _oh, it sounds an awful lot like you._

I’ll listen to the song months later on Futaba’s Discman, feet on her wall and back on her bed, staring up at her ceiling like I often do: _the name of your lipstick, the smell of your perfume,_ he’ll sing. _Made my bed but there’s still too much room._

For now it’s me and him and the space his words fill. A song without a melody yet. A song without any real words. My insomniac cure: getting fucked silly. Is it possible to become a sex addict without warning? Probably. Its chances favour the element of surprise. I crave him. I sleep with him. Boy, do I sleep with him. Sex with him becomes my excuse to extinguish addiction by overindulgence. A little bit, and then a little bit more—it’s always a little bit more. Addiction doesn’t ever work in your favour.

That time, when I woke up, he told me how many eyelashes I had on each eye. Said he counted them all.

“I don’t believe you”, I told him. So he outstretched his finger and began to count again, out loud. _One, two, three…_ his breath was hot on my mouth. All of his skin felt like my skin. If it was so wrong, why did it feel so right?

“When two women link arms in the city, people don’t look twice. They could be sisters or best friends. Though I suppose that doesn’t defeat the fact that they too are withheld the pleasure of marrying each other, sharing their lives without the scrutiny and danger of the public eye. I hated myself for so long. It’s hard not to still when so much of the world wants you to. We have to remind ourselves that there’s nothing wrong with what we’re doing—someone just decided one day that there was. But if it is so wrong, how can it be anything other than right? I tried to explain it to my mother while she was still alive; imagine if it was you, I said. Someone wanted you to die just ‘cos you loved a man. She told me that if I loved men so much I could go fuck myself. Could you love me? Could you love me for what I am? Another man, in love with you. Something fucked up; something that wants to run itself into the ground. Could you love that?”

There’s just something about Goro. If you can’t relate, I think that’s a good thing. You haven’t met someone who, without warning, without consideration, without knowing them past the barest bias biographical standpoint, you would drop everything for and them some. If you can relate, what’s it like on the other side? Does it stop as soon as it begins? Does the ball ever drop? Do you ever fall out of love? Real love like that makes you wish you’d never known it in the first place. It’s quick and sharp and disgusting and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I could”, I say.  
  


* * *

  
  


Cut to us now. Cut to; we’re fags, don’t fuck with us. High on whatever A-grade shit he gets as a celebrity. It’s love, our love, and our bulimia and our psycho-romantic shit and his nosebleed and my sleep-in sleepless nights. His chewing gum in my mouth because that’s where he pits things when he’s bored. I think about my life and how in twenty years I might remember the 80s as the splitting skin on my knuckles from when I hit him that first time and how it felt to have him stretch around me. Tug and pull. The streets outside my window filled with so many people, so much nightlife. I never feel all right. And the dust that builds on my windowsill. I’m always torn between being what I wanna be and hating the thing I am. I’d take a bullet over a little human decency, that’s how far I’m gone.

He trails his thumb over his own bottom lip, cigarette still burning away between his fingers. Lost in thought, he looks like something from a magazine. He hesitates before speaking.

“I wish I wasn’t in my body some days. I get this feeling that the body I’m in isn’t mine. These fingers, arms, shoulders… they’re not mine.”

“Like you don’t want to be a guy?”

“Like I don’t know. Like I want to run away from everything, myself included.”

Cut to us, on our highway. Another Sunday away. He’s saying: “You know sometimes I wake up in this haze a half-hour before my alarm and I have this perfect picture, this perfect poem in my head. All of the right words, the right meanings, they’re there for me. And I lie there and watch it all slip away. I’m too tired to get up and write it down. What good is my life if it’s just the same repeated nonsense? I can’t write forever. I wish I could. Damn, I wish I could but I’m not good enough to do that. Not even close. Then again, it’s not like I could stop. My manager won’t let me. I won’t let me.”

I stare up at the roof of his car. There’s something I can taste, something a little desperate.

I think: maybe now’s the time to run.

“Pull over”, I tell him.

“What?”

“Just do it.”

He does and I unbuckle my seatbelt, leaning over to undo his suit pants and batting his hand away when he reaches to stop me.

“Ren—”

“Please, just…” I’m shaking, choking before I’ve even got him in my mouth. “Just… you can take me to the beach. Not today, but another day. We can go back to mine after this. I’ll make you dinner and it’ll be nice. And we’ll go to the beach another day, yeah?” I grip the base of his cock and his hand slides into my hair.

“Which beach?” he breathes.

“Any beach. Any beach. The furthest one away from here.”

With the cars rushing past, we could be anywhere.

* * *

  
The last time I see Goro is Goro with the stain of bleach in his hair, the stain of blood in his teeth and with a raging, wild look in his eye. His shirt is torn but his jeans were already fashionably ripped. Lala’s demanding they leave, and I’m regretting wearing heels to my shift.

“The things that will outlive you versus the things that you will outlive”, his manager is spitting, hand still fisted in the broken buttons of his shirt. One of the lenses in his glasses has been cracked and I can see a shard in Goro’s knuckle. “That’s important. Knowing your place in the world for all of your worth. I made you, you fucking cocksucker. You get to leave when _I_ fucking tell you to.” Goro’s laugh is bubbly, rapturous.

“Fuck you, Shido.”

* * *

Ann is the one who calls me at 6 the next morning when I wake up to an empty bed. I tell her it’s a shame, he seemed nice. Futaba comes by in tears and I hold her, tell her it’s all right, and tell her I’m sorry her friend went in such a horrible way. None of it matters. None of it means anything. I can close my eyes and be there, be right where he wants me. Every Saturday, every Sunday, every late Friday afternoon. Makoto mentions it over lunch, and I say _who?_

She doesn’t believe me.

I don’t believe myself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank u for reading!
> 
> — tnevmucric.carrd.co


	3. future

When we first met, I didn’t think anything much about him at all. He was plain. Plain Jane. It was less romantic by vast standards as he regaled our first meeting _as a moment._ How he could confine his feelings for me to a single moment, I didn’t understand. We hate, we love, we fuck, we snuggle and watch old movies and he pretends to know a thing or two about French cinema. A moment is easy to come by, is what I mean, and the moment we met was just another moment. It wasn’t _a moment._

I rub his shoulders every morning as I wait for the kettle to boil. I lean my chin on the crown of his head and read the news over his shoulder as he flicks through the paper.

“How’s the world today?” I always ask. He lets go of his own mug to reach up and clasp my hand, pulling it to his mouth to kiss.

“In ruins.”

In his head, a moment. In mine, the strenuous exercise of a degrading relationship. The entanglement of entanglements. Lock without key. Ad: man looking for meaning. I feel as if I am on this endless road; it’s nighttime and all I can see is the blurring view of streetlamp after streetlamp passing me by. I can feel the thrum of the car around me and the ice seeping through the window against my cheek may as well glue me there. Light after light after light—just how many nights have I been out on this road? I can’t live with it. I say: honey I wanna be a pastry chef. Honey I wanna learn how to stitch. Honey I wanna buy a new pair of shoes. Honey doesn’t care. I don’t even care. It’s about action and reaction and we can’t bother doing either. All he does is listen to sad Christmas songs and drink whiskey from our wine glasses. Then we fight and fuck and watch French cinema and in the morning I’ll rub his shoulders while the eggs are burning. It’s my own problem—I don’t love him enough but I can’t let him go because he loved me once. Might love me still. We shift, we disfigure and we come back together. This is us. No more moments, no more firsts; plain myopia in a two-bedroom apartment overlooking our local park. Talk about a twisted arm.

* * *

There’s this moth. This moth, it’s fluttering, jittering in my hand. It’s about the size of my thumb and its legs are as fuzzy as its wings. All I can see past the balcony railing are the silhouettes of buildings like mine and dark trees pushing back the spotted glow of the city in the distance, of streetlamps warming places cold. The moth struggles over the flesh of my palm and sits on the crook of one knuckle. I am as good as this moth, as its every blink, and I am nothing more.

“Are you coming to bed?”

He’s leaning against the sliding door, silent as ever. I know the colour of his robe because of how bright it is in my periphery, because it is his favourite colour. I look back just as he sighs. He looks tired. Mint green, like a malt shake. A breath of spearmint. Fluoride on my lips. My eyes dart back to the moth as it struggles to sit on my nail. The railing is cold against my forearms and below is an endless, bottomless road.

“What do you know about reincarnation?” I ask him. If I turned back again, I know who I would be looking at. The hazy conception of my wildest dreams wrapped in silk. I can hear the barest shift of fabric, him holding his arms, and I listen for the creak of the door as he leans his head against it; one hip propped, like the extra sugar in my coffee. This moth is magnetised to me like a domesticated coin.

“It’s a useful pacifier for those afraid of death.”

“You don’t believe in it?”

“Nothing in life has effected me so dearly, or made me want to stay so much that I would ever beg God for reincarnation.” For the briefest moment, I think he might smile at me, flutter his lashes and say: _except for you._ He doesn’t. His stare remains coolly interested on me and the movement of the moth towards certain demise. Its white wings are like feathers on the lines of my life that stretch ever outwards. He’s making a face that’ll give him wrinkles and cants his hips like someone from a bad porno—right. We should be fucking.

“Do you?” he asks me.

Staring at the dirt on my toes, the same ashy sort of dirt that shows up on concrete and stone, I can see the shape of his body, a slender hourglass, long legs and a thin neck women used to kill for. He is peanut brittle: he will break your teeth and you might just thank him for the flavour.

I relax my hand and the moth flies away.

“Who knows where it’s going”, I say to him. “I think I read somewhere that they’re trying to fly to the moon but all of the lights we give off distract them.” I can’t describe how he looks at me then while I wipe my hands on my sleeves and lean back against the railing. It’s as if he’s still caught in the looks we give others when we know they’re not watching. I watch it slide away, inch-by-inch, and days later I know I would not be able to name any discernible emotion in it.

Lately, no matter where I end up, it’s the fruit flies that follow me.

It started off as moths. Early in the morning while I started up the coffee makers and then late at night while I trained home—and then even later as I tried to sleep, moths upon moths rocketing into the window, so loud and insane that I couldn’t understand why I was the only one who could hear it. The fruit flies came almost like an afterthought or sprinkled touch. The moths all went into the light and the fruit flies arose—infested me. I suppose it does make things a little less lonely. There are nights when I lay in bed and for reasons I can’t explain at all, all I want to do is cry, and I hear a hum by my ear or see a speeding dot darker than shadow—a fruit fly, come to wish me well.

Either that, or I’m rotting.

This moth is the first moth to visit me in weeks.

He tilts his head back the slightest amount, turning away from the balcony to step back inside.

“Come to bed.”

This isn’t a relationship; it’s a broken radio. Communication fuzzy. No hope for summer hits. We’re just sex and caricatures of why we once liked each other—now it’s about tolerance, about waiting for the other to snap and leave or enduring it until we’re both dead because no one will love us like we love us. And sometimes you wish each other were dead. You don’t really mean it.

* * *

“My boyfriend was hit by a car.”

I look down at my hands awkwardly; a warm flush that feels like pain climbs my neck and paints my cheeks. It’s a bodily ache, one that reminds me I’ve been gutted but left with my entrails hanging out. No one to clean me up but myself.

“I screamed. Like, not really screamed. I locked myself in the bathroom, slid down against the door and screamed but nothing came out, not even air. I couldn’t stop slamming my fists into my head. I didn’t know I could hurt that much. Do you know how it feels to have someone gone so quickly? Yesterday we were sitting in the park, flicking ants away from our legs and now his ligaments have been torn across a fucking highway. Yesterday we argued about who should vacuum. And I just… screamed.” My fingers flitted briefly to my collar. “I could hear my throat clicking, could feel it trying to get a noise out. My mouth was stretched so wide that I could have fit my fist in—and people, everyone, they keep saying how sorry they are for my loss, but it’s like he’s still here. It’s only been a day; he could be coming late home from work. It’s someone else’s blood on the dash.” It used to feel like he was always inside of me, squeezing my throat tight. That’s what loving him was like; if he let go, I would fall apart.

“He’s in a better place.”

“They’ve being saying that, too.” I take in Chihaya’s expression. It hasn’t moved since we sat down. “He liked listening to Nina Simone while we had sex. Is that weird?”

“No, not really.”

“It feels weird”, I continue. “You know, now that he’s dead. And he’s not in a better place. He didn’t want to be in a better place after he died, he just wanted to die. No afterlife, no heaven or hell, no reincarnation, nothing. He wanted whatever existence wasn’t—there isn’t even a word for it, I think. _‘Void’_ doesn’t come close.”

“Where do you believe he’s gone?”

“Does that even matter?”

“Yes.” She touches my hand and I can feel the coolness of her bracelet—little stones representing each chakra. “Where is Goro, Ren? Heaven? With his mother?”

I shake my head and rub at my nose. “He resented his mother too much. He liked to pretend he didn’t, but he wasn’t good at that.

“You don’t think death brought him greater perspective?” I scoff.

“This is Goro Akechi we’re talking about. The only greater perspective he got was one he’d planned for _extensively._ What do you think of time-travel?”

“Excuse me?”

“I have this theory that time-travel and reincarnation are related. You can reincarnate into different people, different animals, different times. Imagine dying here and waking up in the year 6000. How do you even imagine the year 6000, and what happened to your essence in those years between? Or maybe reincarnation is our means of both time-travel and connecting to the spirit world. Are we ever allowed to stop, to find out own heaven in whichever soul of ours we’ve chosen to enjoy the most? See, Goro and I, we always had this little joke that us meeting was like fate. His dad was the same guy who accused me of assaulting him back when I was a kid—consider that maybe I’ve met Goro many times in my past lives. We might have been brothers or enemies or lovers, whatever. Taking that into consideration, it’s only time enough until I meet him again. I even thought I heard him talking to me this morning. I heard him loading the dishwasher. What about tonight? Am I going to go home to find him on the couch, watching another fucking rerun of Twin Peaks? Am I going to hear that… that tear of his hairbrush going through his hair? It just all feels so surreal. I close my eyes and there he is, he’s lying beside me, holding me. When I pay enough attention he’s not died, he’s just taken out the recycling bin.” I look at Chihaya but my eyes don’t focus. I can’t tell how long I’ve been talking, but rain has soaked us to the bone. Her dyed hair is plastered to her scalp, her dress slick. “I think I’m more scared that I’ll get home and find the couch empty and the dishes piling up.”

“What are you asking me, Ren?” Her voice is soft, like his, and she hides her accent like I hide mine. Goro used to kiss my jaw and bite at my neck—he said he was going to find wherever those elongated vowels and sharp pronunciations were hiding. He wanted to coax me out of me, and he never failed to.

“Tell me I’m right”, I whisper. “Look in the cards, tell me he’s in a better place because he’s coming back soon and the better place is with _me_. Tell me he’s always going to be with me because I don’t know if I can do this without him. I didn’t know I could hurt this much. Why does it hurt so much?”

Time doesn’t wait for me, doesn’t even let me know it’s about to leave the station. I don’t deserve a two-minute warning. Suddenly, suddenly you are a funeral. Suddenly they’re putting you in your best clothes. Suddenly it’s all your friends and my friends and our friends. Suddenly incense. Suddenly prayers. Suddenly nothing. Suddenly, there’s that void you used to talk about, except it’s swimming in my vision and threatening to take me under. _Take me there_ , I want to call to it. Take me to wherever you are and aren’t. That dark place. Suddenly I am told to move on, that my grieving period is over, it’s time to get back to work. But you were alive a month ago. A month ago you were sliding around the kitchen with your socks on, licking the back of a spoon. You were alive a month ago and the grass on top of your grave hasn’t even grown yet. You’re still dirt. You’re still a fresh, clean slate—a granite marker for decomposition. Three weeks ago you died. Two weeks ago I laid on the kitchen floor with your jacket around me, thinking that this pain was so great, so cold, that I must have been having a heart attack. One week ago I fucked myself on the last thing you touched. One month ago you were with me, and now you’re not. There is no elastic band connecting us, no resistance to slam us back together. You’re gone. They don’t get that the grieving period started the second your heart stopped and will end the moment mine does too. Death would be easier to deal with if we got a peek behind the veil—assuming there’s something decent behind it. Imagine walking all the way down the aisle only to find out you’re about to marry the shining rendition of fuck-ugly. That wouldn’t make things easier at all… but if we each have six doppelgangers in the world, who’s to say I haven’t been Ren Amamiya six hundred times? Maybe what’s behind the veil is each of my compiled corpses decaying away: businessmen and taxidermists and bakers and flight navigators. Six times six times a lifetime of lifetimes. That’s what’s behind my veil, and it’s either fucking ugly or fucking beautiful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank u for reading!
> 
> — tnevmucric.carrd.co

**Author's Note:**

> thank u for reading!
> 
> — tnevmucric.carrd.co


End file.
